


Suburban Mating Call: A Month in the Life

by Lbilover



Series: Suburban Mating Call Series [4]
Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Romantic Comedy, Humor, M/M, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 20:00:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12092346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lbilover/pseuds/Lbilover
Summary: Sean wants to ask Elijah to move in with him, but will he ever work up the nerve?





	1. Chapter 1

“Sean, do you hear something?”

_The sound of our two hearts beating as one? Choirs of heavenly angels singing?_ Sean is tempted to reply, but instead he dutifully listens. “Just the rain,” he replies. It’s coming down hard, pounding on the roof and lashing against the windows.

Elijah is snuggled next to him on the flowered chintz-covered sofa with which he still clashes horribly while managing to look entirely gorgeous. “Fuck, I love the rain,” he purrs, rubbing his cheek against Sean’s sleeve and snuggling even closer. Boots watches them approvingly from her favorite chair, the one that used to be Sean’s.

It’s a Sunday evening a month to the day since their first date, and it’s raining again. It’s rained pretty nearly non-stop for the past four weeks, but Sean doesn't mind. The old Sean would have been fretting over water spots on his car, clothes and shoes, over endless squeegee-ing of the front hall, over the utter impossibility of getting the minute specks of dirt washed onto the driveway by the rain out of the tiny crevices in the macadam (and he's sometimes wondered why, if they could put a man on the moon, no one has been able to invent a uniformly smooth asphalt).

The new Sean, however, loves the rain as much as Elijah, because it means that the two of them stay in most evenings and 'watch some TV'.

'Watching some TV' is an amazing pastime, one that Sean has never before valued as highly as he should have (Brian Williams on the _NBC Nightly News_ and the hallowed curling match notwithstanding). It can be done just about anywhere, no television or remote required: over tables and astride chairs, against walls, inside closets, on the stairs, in the shower. All it takes is a little ingenuity (a hitherto unsuspected but burgeoning talent of Sean's, which Elijah is enthusiastically nurturing), a lot of personal lubricant, and a lover whose picture ought to be placed in the dictionary alongside the word 'flexible’ (possibly with a paper bag over his head so that he doesn’t blind unsuspecting dictionary users with his unearthly beauty).

Sean suspects that someday if the question, ‘How about we watch some TV?' is uttered anywhere within a ten-mile radius of his grave, his moldy bones will leap out of his coffin and start getting frisky. Hopefully with the corresponding moldy bones in Elijah’s grave next door.

Elijah uses a lot of euphemisms for sex, Sean has learned. The first time Elijah asked him if he’d like to ‘go to the movies’, Sean had said, ‘Sure’, and asked Elijah what he would like to see. Elijah had replied, ‘Something loud, where lots of stuff gets blown up’. Disappointed, for he’s always loathed loud movies where lots of stuff gets blown up – pointless, wasteful of perfectly good cars, and horribly dangerous for the stuntspersons involved - Sean had suggested instead the art cinema in downtown LA where an Antonioni retrospective was currently underway. Elijah had just smiled his provocative, Mona Lisa smile, remarked that Sean had led a very sheltered life, and dragged him off to a matinee at the local multiplex where they had sat in the back row, well away from the handful of senior citizens who dotted the theater, and, with the deafening explosions on-screen to mask the spectacular explosions off-screen, done the sorts of things that Sean had secretly never really believed people did in the back rows of darkened movie theaters, attributing the stickiness on the floor to spilled soda, popcorn butter and melting Jujubes.

Boy, had he ever been wrong.

On this particular rainy evening, however, they are actually watching some TV (having earlier 'watched some TV' in the kitchen while doing the dishes), a DVD called _Men with Brooms_. It’s the only feature film ever made about curling, and it has become ‘their’ movie. Constant study of the curling techniques demonstrated in the movie has proved very educational, not to mention that they both find the star of _Men with Brooms_ , Paul Gross, totally hot (though not as hot, obviously, as they find each other; on the subject of his hotness, or lack thereof, Sean has absolutely no qualms anymore, and Elijah’s hotness, of course, goes without question). They’ve even talked about signing up for curling lessons, but in the end decided it was a lot more fun to practice on their own. Also, as Elijah had so trenchantly put it, “Ice is fucking cold, Seanie.”

Today being their one month anniversary, they had celebrated with an intimate candlelit dinner that had miraculously gone off without a hitch, and _sans_ power outage. The menu was an exact replica of the one Sean had planned for their first date, with the addition of some smoked salmon for Boots, whose exquisite manners had earned her a place at the dining room table on this momentous occasion, and some _Red Stripe_ beer for Elijah, who simply didn’t have the makings of a wine connoisseur. He’d accompanied Sean to one of his wine club meetings, after which they had both agreed that it would probably be better if it was his last. His comment on a very expensive 2004 Pouilly Fume ‘Silex’ Sauvignon Blanc, while colorful and succinct, would, alas, go down in wine club infamy. “Smells like cat piss to me,” had been his exact words.

Educational and inspiring as _Men with Brooms_ is, Sean has seen the movie enough times now that his mind wanders away from the plot. Instead he starts thinking about Sydney Carton, the hero of a very different story, _A Tale of Two Cities_. He’s thought a lot about Sydney over the past month, as a matter of fact.

Sean has always loved _A Tale of Two Cities_. While the rest of his high school classmates were moaning and complaining about having to read the Dickens novel (not to mention surreptitiously sharing the Cliff Notes version with each other), Sean had been obsessing over Sydney Carton and wishing that he could be executed in his place.

He’d vividly imagined the scene as he lay in his bed at night. He’d be standing, head held high, in the shadow of Madame Guillotine with his hands bound behind his back, while the executioner slowly raised the blood-stained blade on its creaking rope. As the massive, raucous crowd hushed with anticipation, he would see in the distance Carton and Charles Darnay, freed from imprisonment, riding off together into the sunset. (The fate of poor Lucie Manette had never been of much interest to him.) When the executioner asked him if he had any final words, he would recite the immortal ending line of the novel, _It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known_ , and then kneel in the soiled straw and lower his neck onto the chopping block.

The sad truth is, however, that a borderline obsessive-compulsive neat freak accountant is an unlikely candidate for such noble self-sacrifice. All that blood! The filthy straw!

So, much as Sean wishes that he could somehow impress Elijah with his selfless bravery, it seems highly unlikely that it will ever happen - not if the past month is anything to go by, at least. Not only does he definitely _not_ want his ex-garbageman to go riding off into the sunset with anyone besides him (not even Sydney Carton) but he has totally flubbed any opportunities to demonstrate an even nominal amount of fortitude in the face of adversity.

The Pierced Ear Incident (as Sean will forever think of it) would have made Sydney cry. Or possibly throw up. Or both.

Sean would try to put that incident behind him, as well as the others (and there _have_ been others, despite the positive strides toward a more chaotic life that he has made, but as Elijah likes to tell him, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’) if only he wasn’t trying to work up the nerve to ask Elijah to move in with him, to share his life forever and ever, until death them did part (or after, depending on the friskiness of their moldy bones).

He knows that technically it’s probably too soon to ask. They’ve only been seeing each other for a month, after all, and before that their contact was restricted to a biweekly eye lock through his kitchen window as Elijah spilled Sean’s garbage all over his pristine driveway. He knows that Elijah and his family are wealthier than he could ever dream of being. He knows therefore that there is nothing material he can offer Elijah, that all he _can_ offer are his love and devotion, along with his myriad insecurities and phobias, and that is a scary prospect.

But he also knows that Elijah is by far the best thing that has ever happened to him, that he adores him with every anal retentive, obsessive-compulsive atom of his being, and that he’s ready to cast caution to the wind, to do the emotional equivalent of running naked around the front lawn in the rain (and maybe even hugging a tree). Because Elijah is all those things to him, and more: he is spontaneity, he is freedom, he is the breath of hope, he is _life_.

“Elijah,” says Sean, mentally naked and dripping wet and ready at last to embrace that tree.

Elijah’s eyes turn to his, those incredible eyes with their golden rays shooting out from behind the pupils, as if the sun has been trapped inside them… Sean is falling, falling, falling…

“Sean? Seanie? You with me?”

_Oops!_ He’s zoned out again. And the moment has passed. For in place of Elijah’s blue eyes, he suddenly sees a pair of cool grey eyes, Sydney Carton’s eyes, and they are dismissive, even disdainful as they assess Sean and his worthiness.

_You don’t deserve him_ , Sydney says. _I know about the Pierced Ear Incident, Sean. Not much of a hero there, were you?_

It’s true. He wasn’t. Feeling weirdly as if he’s stepped out of _A Tale of Two Cities_ and straight into _A Christmas Carol_ , he seems to be standing outside himself and watching as he and Elijah climb into his Lexus 12 days earlier…

~~~

Not everything unfortunately is a euphemism for sex; instead of staying home on this gray and rainy day in order to ‘watch some TV’, Sean and Elijah are speeding down the 10 through the rain in Sean’s Lexus. They are ‘going to the mall’, which, sadly for Sean, turns out to be simply a euphemism for going to the mall.

Elijah is behind the wheel of the speeding car (which wouldn’t be speeding if Sean were driving it, but sitting sedately in the right-hand lane going precisely the speed limit while the drivers behind him unaccountably honked their horns and gave him the finger). It had taken only a couple of outings with Sean at the wheel for Elijah to inform him, gently, that he drove like a little old lady and to suggest that it might be better (and more time-efficient) for him to drive instead. In all innocence, Sean had agreed.

Sean has come a long way in just a couple of weeks. His right foot is pressed into the floorboard so hard that it’s a wonder it hasn’t gone right through so he can see the road flashing beneath him, and he’s sure that it won’t be long before he’ll have to replace the rapidly wearing out carpet on the passenger side. But he is no longer sweating profusely, bracing his arm on the dashboard or closing his eyes and saying a prayer every time Elijah cuts someone off (which he does with distressing frequency), or tailgates (ditto), or exceeds the speed limit (ditto again), or drives with his left hand on the steering wheel and his right hand resting on Sean’s thigh (ditto a third time, but he can’t honestly call that frequency distressing - arousing, but definitely not distressing).

The rain is coming down harder and harder, and the windshield wipers are _whap, whap, whapping_ away, revealing the rear bumper of a giant moving van about six inches in front of them as they tear along at 70 miles per hour. Elijah suddenly pulls out from behind the moving van into the left lane and floors the Lexus, pushing it up to 85 (a speed that Sean believes should only be attained by race cars, ambulances speeding sick people to the emergency room, and police cars chasing fleeing suspects - although an OJ-style slow motion chase seems infinitely more sensible) without ever removing his hand from Sean’s thigh.

“Elijah,” Sean says involuntarily, squinting to block out the speedometer’s bright orange digital display.

Elijah smiles at him and gives his quadriceps a reassuring squeeze. “Relax, Seanie. Everything’s going to be fine.”

And weirdly, when Elijah says it (even though he has taken his eyes off the road while doing so), Sean believes him, even when Elijah weaves into the middle lane, darts back into the left lane, hesitates, then shoots all the way back to the right lane, narrowly avoiding three other cars and a transit bus, and careens up the exit ramp for the mall.

As they pull into the parking lot, Sean relaxes his cramped fingers that have taken a death grip on the door handle, and reminds himself why they are here. Elijah has asked him to help him pick out a new pair of jeans, and how could he possibly have refused such a request? He personally tends to avoid malls like the plague - the re-circulated air spreads around the germs from all those little kids with runny noses, Christmas music seems to play year-round, the food court restaurants are each more horrible than the last, and the obligatory tinkling waterfalls always fill him with an overpowering urge to pee. But for Elijah, no sacrifice is too great.

Besides, if he doesn’t go with Elijah, there is no guarantee that the new jeans will meet the standards of his now full-blown knee fetish. Discreet rips that allow provocative glimpses of those pale bony knees are absolutely essential.

Sean trails after Elijah across the noisy, crowded mall and in and out of clothing stores, admiring that perfect rear he’d first seen outlined by the navy blue jumpsuit considered _de rigueur_ for employees of Wood Waste and Refuse Disposal, and wishing he were wearing a surgical mask. The number of sneezing, coughing, runny-nosed children being wheeled around by their parents appears to be at an all-time high.

A suitably fetish-feeding pair of jeans is finally located in a trendy store where it is so dark Sean can barely see past the end of his snub nose (which Elijah calls ‘unbearably cute’), the pounding rock music seems to be trying to crack open his skull like a raw egg, and the pierced, tattooed and blue-haired salespersons all look about 14 and ready to expire of extreme boredom. Elijah with his trendily messy haircut, holey jeans, faded Ramones tee shirt and scuffed boots fits right in. Sean, with his fussily conservative haircut (which has gotten slightly less fussy and conservative of late; Elijah has convinced him to let his bangs grow longer, and the resultant curls, according to Elijah, make him look ‘insanely adorable’), Dockers, Ralph Lauren button-down and highly polished loafers, looks as if he’s taken a wrong turn on the way to the local country club.

Elijah picks out several pairs of jeans to try on, while Sean, discovering that the changing cubicles are as brightly lit as the rest of the store is Stygian, and convinced that those bored 14 year-olds will be alleviating their boredom by watching them on closed-circuit monitors, waits outside, lest ‘trying on jeans’ is another of Elijah’s euphemisms for something else. Eventually Elijah emerges triumphant, jeans in hand, and on the way to the checkout counter tries to interest Sean in a shirt. At least, Sean assumes it is a shirt as it is in the shirt section, although it’s a mystery to him how one is supposed to put it on.

“This is definitely you, Sean,” Elijah shouts over the pulsing, pounding music, holding the black, chain-festooned shirt-like apparel up against him.

“Umm…” Sean replies, squinting down hard at it, while he wonders what it means that Elijah thinks the shirt is ‘him’, and then decides that it’s probably better not to know.

“Hmm. Then again, maybe not. Black’s not really your color. Too bad they don’t have one in green.”

Elijah regretfully returns the shirt to the rack, and Sean relaxes, knowing he is out of danger. Although it’s difficult to say for absolute certain in the gloom, none of the clothing in the store, other than the blue jeans, appears to come in a color _other_ than black.

All is well as they exit the store, trading ear-splitting rock music for something that sounds vaguely like ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (Four Months Early)’, and if they had only chosen a different exit from the mall, all would have continued to be well. But their path takes them right past a store with the ominous-sounding name, ‘The Piercing Pagoda’.

Seeing it, Elijah halts and grabs Sean’s arm. “Oh my god, this is perfect, Sean!” he exclaims. “You can get your ear pierced. I’ve been thinking you should so we can wear matching earrings!”

Which only goes to show, Sean thinks as he is helplessly propelled inside by his determined ex-garbageman (who, despite his ineptitude at emptying garbage cans, is far stronger than his slender build would lead one to believe), that Elijah still has a lot to learn about Sean and his phobias.

“Elijah,” he says, urgently. But it’s too late.

“My boyfriend wants to get his ear pierced,” Elijah announces to the woman behind the counter, and Sean is Silly Putty in Elijah’s small hands.

_My boyfriend_ , Elijah has said. _My boyfriend_ : the two most beautiful words in the English language, Sean thinks. (Well, the second two most beautiful words, but the first two most beautiful words in the English language aren’t repeatable in polite company.)

And the next thing Sean knows, he’s sitting in a black plastic chair having his right earlobe swabbed with an alcohol pad by the woman, who is clearly older than 14, but looks about as enthusiastic at the prospect of piercing Sean’s ear as Sean is at having it pierced. Which is to say, not at all.

“Just hold still,” the woman says in a flat, nasal voice, dropping the used alcohol pad in a trash can and hefting a blue device that looks to Sean’s panicked gaze unnervingly like a gun. “This won’t hurt, I promise.”

Sean has heard those same words before. A nurse in his pediatrician’s office had said them to him when he was 7 years old, just before giving him a shot with a needle that to this day Sean swears was at least 3 feet long, and had gone in one side of his arm and right out the other. His resultant scream had, his mother later claimed, rattled the windows, emptied the waiting room, and caused a seismic tremor that registered at 4.7 on the Richter scale.

As the woman comes at him with the piercing device, with which she intends to _shoot a gold stud into his earlobe_ , Sean flashes back to the doctor’s office and the nurse wielding the giant needle. Black dots start dancing the cha-cha before his eyes. The last thing he hears before he passes out is Elijah’s worried voice saying, “Sean? Sean, are you okay?”

When he returns to consciousness, he’s sitting on the none-too-clean floor of ‘The Piercing Pagoda’ with his head between his knees, his earlobe un-pierced, Elijah’s arm protectively around him, and a crowd of curious passers-by staring in the window at him as if he is a contestant on the ‘Wimp of the Week’ show.

“Would you like me to call the paramedics?” The woman offers in a desultory fashion, leading Sean to hope he isn’t the first person to pass out in ‘The Piercing Pagoda’.

“No, no, I’m fine, really,” Sean says, flushing and flustered. “It was only a… momentary weakness.”

“Wow, I never heard of a guy passing out just because he was getting his ear pierced,” she exclaims loudly and with relish. “Or a gal for that matter.”

His hopes dashed, Sean’s flush deepens to bright scarlet with humiliation. Elijah tightens his arm around him and says, loyally but untruthfully, “It was a low blood sugar attack, that’s all. My boyfriend gets them sometimes.”

“Oh yeah?” She’s clearly not buying a word of it.

An astonishing transformation then occurs, and it lifts Sean from the doldrums of humiliation and causes his heart to swell like the Grinch’s until it feels several times too large for his body. (In fact, he’s pretty certain he hears his ribs creaking in protest.) Those brilliant blue eyes narrow and darken to a flinty gray, and Elijah fixes the woman with his flinty stare and says, “ _Yes_.”

After which, the woman clamps her mouth shut and retreats behind the counter with her piercing gun, while Elijah, cooing endearments under his breath, helps Sean to his feet and brushes him off.

Outside ‘The Piercing Pagoda’, the disappointed crowd, seeing that the small drama is over and no one has died, is dispersing, and he and Elijah make good their escape.

“Elijah, I’m so sorry for passing out on you like that,” Sean apologizes. “I just… it was just…” _Me being me_.

“It’s okay,” Elijah says, hugging his arm. “It was my fault, anyway. I shouldn’t have sprung the idea on you like that. You’re getting awfully good at being spontaneous, Sean,” and a glistening speck of drool appears at the corner of his mouth, “but having sex on the squash court at my dad’s house isn’t really the same kind of spontaneous as getting your ear pierced.”

Truer words were never spoken, thinks Sean, because if Elijah’s father had discovered Sean having sex with his son on the squash court, he wouldn’t have an earlobe remaining to be pierced. It, and the rest of him, would probably be rotting in a landfill somewhere.

“You can get your ear pierced later, when you’ve had a little more time to get used to the idea,” Elijah goes on. “I dunno, maybe you could have it done in a doctor’s office instead. That’d be more sanitary and safer, right? I noticed the floor in that store wasn’t very clean.”

Sean is overcome with emotion (and not because the words ‘doctor’s office’ send a reminiscent chill snaking down his spine). Elijah has not only stood up for him, but he’s noticed the state of the floor in ‘The Piercing Pagoda’! “Elijah, you… you… you’re…” He becomes too choked up and misty-eyed to go on.

“I know: I’m an angel.” Elijah smiles his dazzling smile that turns Sean’s insides to the consistency of rice pudding, and takes Sean’s hand. They are at the mall exit now. “Come on, Seanie,” he says, “let’s go back to your place and watch some TV.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Elijah meets Sean's parents and brother for the first time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, folks, I have nothing against begonias. I just wouldn't plant them in my yard.

_Not very Sydney Carton-esque, were you?_ The imaginary Sydney says, with a sad shake of his head (still, fortunately, attached to his body).

And what can Sean say in his own defense? It’s true. _But Elijah didn’t mind. He understood._

_That’s no excuse._

_Well, what about the visit to my parents? That went pretty well._

_Ah, yes. The visit to your parents. Let’s examine that next, shall we?_

_On second thought, maybe we better not…_

But it’s too late. A second time, Sean is standing outside himself. It is ten days earlier, and he’s watching as he and Elijah get out of the Lexus, parked in the driveway of his parents’ tidy suburban villa in Long Beach…

~~~

“Relax, Seanie. Everything’s going to be fine,” Elijah says as they head up the cement walk to the front door. The walk is lined with red begonias surrounded by black mulch, Sean’s father’s idea of landscaping.

Regretfully, despite the sentimental association begonias now have for him and Elijah, Sean has decided that he still loathes the horrible, plastic-looking flowers, with the sole exception of the sweet little blue begonia that resides in the empty can of ‘Gourmet Salmon and Shrimp Feast’ on Elijah’s windowsill (and that he has seen exactly twice; while Elijah has his own small carriage house apartment on the Wood estate, Warren Wood, the Refuse King, is a passionate amateur astronomer who owns the sort of telescope that is more generally found in a remote, mountaintop observatory, information that Sean finds distinctly unnerving and off-putting). He used to wonder if his loathing for begonias wasn’t on some level an act of filial rebellion, but has long since concluded that he simply can’t stand flowers that look as if they were manufactured out of recycled rubber.

Much as he would like to believe Elijah’s reassurance that everything will be fine, it’s a struggle. Previous introductions of boyfriends to his parents have been about as successful as the _Hindenburg_ ’s last flight. Adding to the potential for disaster is the fact that Sean’s brother will also be in attendance. They love each other, but each secretly is convinced that the other is adopted, because they have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common.

Perhaps because Sean’s attempts to talk about Elijah to his family have consisted for the most part of incoherent babbling punctuated by words like ‘perfect’ and ‘angelic’, the front door is open, and his mother, father and brother are standing at the ready like a reception line at a wedding, before he and Elijah have even reached the truly hideous fiberglass statue of a pig holding a welcome sign that stands halfway up the walk.

The flesh-colored pig, who wears the sort of jolly smile that Sean imagines axe murderers wear as they raise the hatchet high, has featured prominently in a number of vivid nightmares that he’s had over the years. Elijah’s eyes widen slightly as he takes in the statue in all its leering, porcine glory, and he leans in and whispers, “Jesus, Sean, that pig gives me the willies.”

It probably isn’t technically possible for Sean to be any more in love with Elijah than he already is, but he gives it his best shot.

“So, you’re Elijah!” Sean’s mother greets them with a forced perkiness that is as false as the fiberglass pig’s smile. “Sean has told us so much about you.” _Most of it incomprehensible_. The words seem to hang unspoken in the air.

Sean’s father and brother are nodding in agreement, and all three scrutinize Elijah as if he’s a specimen in a Petri jar. Sean half expects them to whip out magnifying glasses any second.

He anxiously awaits their reactions; taste in begonias, fiberglass pigs, and many, _many_ other, not to say all other, areas aside, he really does love his family, and he wants them to love Elijah the same way he does (well, not _precisely_ the same way he does). But they appear underwhelmed by the vision of angelic perfection standing before them, and Sean’s anxiety ramps up a notch. Or ten notches. Or a million. He hopes he isn’t going disgrace himself by passing out again, the way he did at ‘The Piercing Pagoda’, but he is suddenly having difficulty breathing.

“How do you do, Mrs. Astin? It’s such a pleasure to meet you,” Elijah says, speaking earnestly and leaning forward slightly in that way he has, while he fixes his enormous blue eyes on her, and holds out a long cylinder of white florists’ paper. “I brought you some flowers.”

“Why, thank you, Elijah. That’s very thoughtful of you.” Sean’s mother accepts the flowers, but rather as if Elijah has just offered her a bouquet of toxic waste or venomous snakes. Sean knows exactly why, and a reminiscent shudder runs through him.

His previous boyfriend, Charles, had also brought Sean’s mother flowers once. Charles had been an artist who did installations at galleries of things like broken kitchen appliances, or black draped, upside down chairs, or massive canvases with just one dot of paint on them (or none at all). Sean had never really quite ‘got’ Charles’s creations, although he had striven valiantly to be worthy of his boyfriend’s vision and spouted lots of nonsensical verbiage about the profoundness of his insight into the human condition that Charles had eaten up with a spoon.

But even Sean’s powers of invention had failed when his mother unwrapped Charles’s floral offering, and discovered an assortment of withered dead stalks with crumbling brown blooms. Later, in the kitchen, Sean had tried to repair the damage, and explained to her that it was all part of Charles’s ironic, post-modernist, deconstructionist view on life. She had listened without comment, and when Sean had eventually floundered to a stop, said flatly, “Your boyfriend gave me _dead flowers_ , Sean.”

There had really been nothing more to be said after that, and the Unsuitable Dating Material alarm that had been going pretty much nonstop since Sean first started seeing Charles, but over which Sean had thrown some black fabric and insisted it become part of an installation, grew louder.

Matters had only degenerated from there, and the evening had been such an unmitigated disaster that Sean had blotted most of it out of his mind.

The only other thing he remembers with crystal clarity is what happened after they left (with Sean doing the driving; Charles didn’t drive – he knew how, but he refused, feeling it was an ironic, post-modernist, deconstructionist commentary on the human condition to be the only person in southern California who didn’t. As a consequence, Sean had to ferry him everywhere.) Charles had announced that he’d been struck with a brilliant inspiration for his next art project. He would set up several video cameras in Sean’s parents’ house and let his parents be the installation. “They are so deliciously _bourgeois_ , Sean,” he’d explained. “What better commentary on the human condition than to film them as they lead their lives of quiet desperation?”

The Unsuitable Dating Material alarm had completely lost patience with Sean then, pulled out a rubber mallet, and clobbered him hard over the head. _Idiot!_ it castigated him.

“Are you going to drape them in black fabric while they do?” Sean had asked, snidely. Then he’d stopped the car, invited Charles to get out and, when Charles protested, demanding to know how Sean expected him to get home, added that it would be an ironic, post-modernist, deconstructionist commentary on the human condition if he were to walk there. He had never seen Charles again.

Elijah, thankfully, has not given Sean’s mother a bouquet of dead flowers, but rather a bouquet of very much not-dead flowers, including an assortment of carnations, his mother’s absolute favorite, dyed improbable pastel shades. (Sean sometimes wonders if anyone has ever asked carnations if they mind being dyed. He suspects if they were given a choice, they’d politely decline.)

Sean’s mother shows signs of imminent melting, like the polar icecaps. “I’ll just run and find a vase for these lovely flowers Elijah brought me,” she says, smiling widely, and trots off.

Sean’s father is the next to emulate global warming. Elijah gives him a firm handshake, a respectful, “Hello, Mr. Astin,” and a bottle of _Jim Beam_. “Sean told me you like whiskey. I hope this is all right, sir.” Mr. Beam and Sean’s father are old and dear friends, as it happens, and Sean’s father casts an approving look in Sean’s direction, as if to say, _You’ve picked a winner this time, son, don’t go blowing it now_.

_Believe me, dad, I don’t mean to_ , Sean sends back, hoping his father gets the message. But he probably just thinks Sean is constipated, the way he usually does.

They troop off to the living room, and the evening progresses splendidly. Elijah laughs at Sean’s father’s lame jokes, chats knowledgably about the Dodgers and baseball with Sean’s fanatical brother (thus giving Sean another reason to be thankful to Elijah’s baseball-obsessed former boyfriend who had unaccountably preferred the Nation’s Pastime to Angelic Perfection) and even compliments Sean’s mother on the hors d’oeuvres (“Mm, I love mini-gherkins, Mrs. Astin,” he says, maintaining a perfectly straight face as he spears one of the slimy little pickles with a toothpick and crunches it, something Sean has never been able to bring himself to do ever, even for his mother).

Sean’s mother is many things, but an accomplished hostess she isn’t. Velveeta on Ritz crackers, frankfurters in blankets, stuffed celery stalks, and the aforementioned mini-gherkins, complete with red, blue and green frilled toothpicks, went out of style in the 60s, but someone forgot to send her the memo. Sean can only conclude that even angelic perfection isn’t above telling a tiny white lie for politeness’ sake, and comparing Elijah, so generous of heart, so sweet of nature (not to mention so totally hot) with the pretentious Charles, is such an uplifting exercise that before he knows it, he’s completely zoned out again, right there in his parents’ living room, in front of his family.

“Sean? Son, are you all right?” Sean’s father’s voice penetrates the Elijah-haze.

Sean starts and blushes. “I, um… I…” _find my boyfriend insanely sexy, and if you weren’t here, we’d be writhing around naked on the carpet right now_.

“I hope you aren’t suffering from low blood sugar, Sean,” Sean’s mother says worriedly. “You know, your great-grandmother McMahon used to do the same thing, when her sugar was too low.”

The mention of low blood sugar reminds Sean of the humiliating incident at ‘The Piercing Pagoda’ and he blushes harder. His brother is staring at him as if he has a pretty good idea why Sean zoned out, and Sean just knows that he’s saving up the information to torment him with later. That’s what brothers do, after all - especially when they are the brothers of Sean Astin, and have such ample fodder for saving.

Elijah pipes up. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Astin, it isn’t low blood sugar,” he says earnestly. “It’s me. I have that effect on Sean sometimes. He’ll be perfectly fine in a moment.” He slips his arm around Sean’s shoulders and gives him a warm hug. “Right, Seanie?”

It’s difficult to say who is more embarrassed by Elijah’s open display of affection: Sean or his parents (his brother is saving this up to torment him with later, too, Sean suspects). There is an awkward silence while Sean desperately thinks of something to say that won’t be along the lines of ‘How about we blow this joint and go watch some TV, Elijah?’ - except put a lot less euphemistically - and then Elijah leans forward and picks up a Ritz cracker.

“Yum, cheese! I love cheese,” he exclaims. “Sean gave me cheese on our first date.” His eyes laugh at Sean, and he rests his hand intimately on Sean’s thigh. “Quite a lot of cheese, as a matter of fact.”

The hand-on-thigh move isn’t meant to be provocative. Elijah likes to touch; Sean found that out early on, much to his delight. He’s physically demonstrative, and resting his hand on Sean’s thigh is second nature to him. But its effect on Sean’s parents, who no more want to think about or imagine their son having sex with his boyfriend than their son wants to think about or imagine his parents having sex with each other (or anyone else for that matter), is to lower the temperature in the room by several notches. The polar icecaps are freezing again.

Watching them desperately and unsuccessfully attempting to keep their eyes averted from that small, nail-bitten hand curled around their son’s quadriceps fills Sean with an urge to giggle. Not that he finds the situation at all funny. The giggle that is trying to force its way out is both nervous and hysterical, and not in the least enchanting, like Elijah’s choirs-of-angels-sitting-on-fluffy-clouds-and-playing-the-harp giggle.

Finally, Sean’s father jumps valiantly into the breach and asks, “What exactly is it that you do for a living, Elijah?”

Such a question has never before been asked of one of Sean’s beaux, because it has never been necessary. His previous beaux all shared, Sean realizes in retrospect, the same compelling need to talk, at length, about themselves. Charles, for example, had gone on and on in excruciatingly boring detail about his latest installation, which Sean can no longer recall except that, whatever it was, it had been festooned in black fabric as an ironic, post-modernist, deconstructionist commentary on the human condition.

“Well, right at the moment, I’m between jobs,” Elijah replies, munching on his Ritz-with-Velveeta with every evidence of enjoyment. “When I met Sean, I was working for my dad, but I’m taking a break while I decide what to do with my life. I could never be an accountant - I’m not brilliant like Sean is - but I’ve always thought it might be fun to start my own record label. I’m really into music.”

Hearing himself described as ‘brilliant’ to his family has to be a high point of Sean’s life so far, but there is no time to dwell on the amazing feeling, because Elijah’s words, _I’ve always thought it might be fun to start my own record label_ , have clued them into a possibility that had obviously not occurred to them before.

Like all southern Californians, the Astins have met their share of starry-eyed dreamers who have moved to the LA area in hopes of making it big in the movies or the music industry. The temperature in the room plummets further as they regard the oblivious, cracker-munching young man who has one hand possessively on Sean’s thigh and no doubt plans to put the other in his pocket and lift his wallet. It has always been a fear of Sean’s parents that some gold digger will come along and take advantage of their well-to-do accountant son, whom they tend to think of as gullible and naïve (possibly with some justification).

“I see.” The words are clipped and disapproving, and too late Sean wishes that instead of babbling incoherently to his parents about angelic perfection, he’d faxed them a copy of Warren Wood’s latest 1040 form. He should have realized he had his priorities mixed up, parentally speaking.

“Dad,” he quickly interjects before matters can deteriorate further, “Elijah’s father owns Wood Waste and Refuse Removal.”

There is a stunned silence.

“Do you mean to tell me that your father is _Warren Wood, the Refuse King_?” Sean’s father utters in a faint voice, repeating word-for-word, if he’d only known it, what Sean had said to Elijah when he learned the incredible truth.

Elijah sighs and sets down his half-eaten Ritz. “Yes, I’m afraid so,” he replies.

The stunned silence continues while Sean’s parents try to absorb the unexpected revelation that the slight, unassuming young man sitting beside Sean with his hand on his thigh has no intention of or need to lift his wallet, because he is the son of one of the wealthiest men in southern California. And given that southern California is home to an awful lot of very wealthy people, this is no mean feat.

The wonder is that the room isn’t flooded as the polar icecaps abruptly re-melt.

As the realization sinks in, Sean watches his parents and brother exchange looks indicative of total and complete incredulity: _How on earth_ , those looks plainly say, _has Sean, who we love, but let’s face it, is more than a trifle odd, ever managed to land such a catch?_

Sean can’t blame them; how can he when he asks himself the same question at least a thousand times a day?

“Have another Ritz, dear,” says Sean’s mother warmly.

Later, as they sit around the dining room table eating their canned Mandarin orange slices garnished with Maraschino cherries, Elijah drops yet another bombshell onto the heads of Sean’s unsuspecting family.

“Oh, Mrs. Astin,” Elijah says, noticing the lighted curio cabinet wherein she has displayed her collection of ceramic figurines, a collection that Sean personally tries very hard never, ever to notice, seeing that it consists mainly of extremely twee-looking baby animals with abnormally large eyes, and scary-looking, nightmare-inducing clowns with expressions similar to that of the Welcome Pig. “That little kitten statue there reminds me of Sean’s cat. She’s black and white, too.”

Sean had honestly been meaning to tell his family about Boots, but he kept forgetting, distracted by the need to babble incoherently to them about the other new love in his life. Therefore, the effect of Elijah’s statement on them is, well, cataclysmic.

Three spoons stop in mid-air simultaneously. Three incredulous gazes fasten on Elijah’s face. The only sound in the room is the _drip, drip, drip_ of Mandarin orange syrup plopping back into three cut-glass fruit cups.

“ _Sean’s cat?_ Oh, I see!” Sean’s mother laughs merrily. “You mean a _fake_ cat. Is it stuffed or ceramic like mine?”

“Oh no, she’s real,” Elijah replies. His eyes glow with fervent admiration as he looks at Sean. “She was a stray until Sean adopted her and gave her a home.”

Sean’s father carefully sets down his spoon and clears his throat. “Son, is Elijah correct? You actually have a _cat_? A cat with- with _fur_ and _claws_? And a- a-" his voice drops to a tense whisper, “ _litter box_?”

“Yes, I actually have a cat, Dad,” Sean replies, feeling almost sorry for his father. “I brush her several times a day so she doesn’t get hair all over the place, and I bought her a scratching post so she won’t claw the furniture.” Honesty then compels him to add, “But Elijah has been cleaning her litter box for me.” It had only taken Elijah one look at Sean’s face as he confronted Boots’s dirty litter box armed with plastic scoop, Ziploc bag, rubber gloves and Lysol spray, to make the heroic (and gratefully seized upon - no false pride for Sean) offer.

“Ah!” There is a uniform relieved sigh at this proof that Sean is still their Sean, after all, not some cat-loving alien who has taken over his body, but he doesn’t mind. Too much change at one time _is_ difficult to handle. He doesn’t want his family to die of shock, not now when he has Elijah to show off to them and is happier than he has ever known he could be. Surely he’s entitled to gloat, just a little?

“So, what do you call your cat?” Sean’s brother then asks him.

“Boots.” Sean is unable to keep a defensive note from creeping into his voice; he knows what is coming next.

His brother bursts into derisive laughter, the sort of laughter that Sean has heard aimed in his direction all too often in his life. “ _Boots?_ Jesus, Sean, you named your cat ‘Boots’?”

And that’s when it happens a second time. Elijah’s small, nail-bitten hand clenches around the handle of his spoon. His eyes narrow and darken from sapphire blue to flinty gray. He fixes Sean’s brother with that flinty stare, and says quietly, “ _I_ think Boots is a beautiful name.”

The click of metal spoons on glass is the only sound in the room for some considerable time.

It is the most uplifting moment of Sean’s entire life, beating out, hands down, his never-to-be-forgotten glass of _Chateau Lafite Rothschild_ ‘82 and even the time he heard Kiri Te Kanawa sing ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’ live.

“I like your family, Sean,” remarks Elijah as they are driving back to Sean’s house a couple of hours later. “Only, I’m not sure they really appreciate just how lucky they are to have you.” His hand pets Sean’s thigh. “But that’s okay,” he goes on, sounding rather fierce, “ _I_ know.”

“Elijah,” Sean says, “pull over.”

He doesn’t invite Elijah to get out, as he had Charles. Instead he unfastens Elijah’s seatbelt, hauls him onto his lap, and in between passionate kisses suggests they watch some TV.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sean and Elijah go to the movies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All the statistics, factoids, etc. that Sean recites to Elijah in this part are real, and taken from various Internet sources. All the statistics, factoids, etc. that Elijah recites to Mr. Machismo in this part are not real, but come from the evil recesses of my demented brain. :)

“Sean, are you _sure_ you don’t hear something?”

Oh, Sean can hear something all right. He can hear the noises he and Elijah had made in the passenger seat of his Lexus that night as they frantically writhed against each other, every blissful moan, gasp, whimper, fuck, and shit (the latter two having been Elijah’s contributions to the soundtrack). He assumes that this isn’t what Elijah means, however, since though they share (in Sean’s opinion) an almost spooky ability to communicate mentally (granted both their minds tend to run in the same direction most of the time - okay, pretty much all the time), he is fairly certain that Elijah is still actually watching _Men with Brooms_ and not having a (hopefully imaginary or else he’s in really deep trouble) Christmas Carol-like experience with the ghost of Sydney Carton.

“Just the rain, Elijah. That’s all I can hear,” Sean replies, for it is still pouring down, of course. The movie has reached the climactic championship curling match scene now (Sean’s favorite part, as ogling opportunities are plentiful), but it appears that Sydney is not quite done with him, for his dour image is suddenly superimposed over that of Paul Gross, blocking the view.

The Hero of _A Tale of Two Cities_ seems unperturbed by the writhing and moaning he has just witnessed. His arms are crossed on his chest beneath the frothy fall of lace tied around his neck (at which Sean tries not to look too closely, lest the cravat be holding something more together than the collar of his starched shirt) and his face is expressionless.

_Well_ , Sean says with determined brightness, _that second incident certainly ended on a, erm, high note, didn’t it?_ Which is an understatement. Sean had been surprised the car windows hadn’t shattered when Elijah climaxed with a vocal splendor that would have had Memorex rushing to replace Ella Fitzgerald in that old commercial for their cassette tapes.

Sydney only regards Sean with maddening calm.

_Aren’t you going to say anything?_

_You are forgetting your Dickens_ , Sydney reproves him. _I am but a spirit, sent to show you your past actions. You are the one who must watch and learn._

_Maybe, but surely you’ve realized by now that Elijah is an angel, and much, much too good for me. I mean, I can’t even clean my own cat’s litter box. How the hell am I ever going to be a hero to him?_ Then sudden defiance wells up inside him. _But I don’t care_ , he adds, raising his head high and squaring his jaw in his best imitation of Sydney facing the guillotine. _I’m not giving him up without a fight, not even for you._

A faint smile warms those cool grey eyes. _Angelic your Elijah may be, but I have an angel of my own. I have no need of yours._

_You mean Charles Darnay?_ Sean asks with avid curiosity, and it occurs to him that perhaps the reason he had so steadfastly ignored the Unsuitable Dating Material alarm’s shrill warnings with regard to his former boyfriend was his name. Not Chuck, not Charlie, not Chas, not (shudder) Chip, but Charles.

_However, I do admire your determination_ , Sydney continues as if Sean hasn’t spoken, and Sean wonders if all imaginary visiting ghosts are as uncooperative as his, or if it’s just his bad luck. _You are making progress, Sean._

Sean seizes on the opening offered, hoping to divert Sydney lest he is aware of the most recent blot on Sean’s metaphorical escutcheon. _Really? Then maybe we should wrap this little visit up now. You must be anxious to, um, get back to who you were doing_. He blushes and squirms. _I mean, what you were doing._

For just an instant, Sydney looks as if he badly wants to laugh. _Not quite yet._

Damn! _But Sydney…_

_Sean, Sean_. Sydney gazes pityingly at him. _You didn’t honestly expect me to depart without reviewing the Paper Towel Incident with you, did you? What sort of spirit would that make me? Not to mention the trouble I’d get into with the Spirit Review Board._

Sean gives a defeated sigh - as an accountant, he knows all about review boards - and for the third (and definitely last - he refuses to suffer more than Scrooge) time, he stands outside himself and watches as he and Elijah sit, more or less chastely this time, in a darkened movie theater in downtown LA, just three days earlier…

~~~

“This is a fucking weird movie, Sean,” Elijah is saying. “What asshole makes an entire movie about a guy obsessed with putting his hand on some girl’s knee?”

The fingers of Sean’s left hand have slipped inside the artful tears in the right knee of Elijah’s new jeans, and are stroking and fondling the pale bony kneecap concealed within. At Elijah’s whispered question, Sean jerks away his hand, blushing, but Elijah absent-mindedly retrieves it and settles it back in place.

“Eric Rohmer is a great director, Elijah,” Sean whispers back. “And _Claire’s Knee_ won a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film in 1973.”

“It did? Well, that just goes to prove that the people who vote for movies are as weird as the people who make them. Oh, I grant you that the cinematography totally kicks ass, but that main character is a seriously fucked up guy.”

“He just has an, um, innocent obsession,” argues Sean, willing his hand not to jerk away again.

“With a _knee?_ ” Elijah giggles his heavenly giggle as if the very idea is too absurd for words, and jiggles his leg in unconscious encouragement.

Sean resumes his fondling. “There’s no accounting for taste.”

“I suppose. I wish it wasn’t such a _quiet_ movie, though. I don’t suppose anything gets blown up later on, does it?”

“Afraid not,” Sean says with regret.

“Well, at least next time I get to pick the movie.”

Elijah offers Sean a giant-sized yellow tub, and he scrabbles up a handful of gloriously butter-drenched, salty popcorn. His diet has been shot all to hell since he started dating Elijah. After the power outage, he’d thrown out the freezer-full of Lean Cuisines, fearing botulism, salmonella, or some other deadly food-borne pathogen, even though they’d seemed pretty solidly frozen. And somehow, he’s just never gotten around to replacing them. He’s still managed to lose several pounds, thanks to all the healthful exercise he’s been getting both on and off the squash court (not to mention on the squash court in an off the squash court sort of way) with the able assistance of his own very dedicated personal coach.

He grins, a supremely stupid, sappy grin, as he alternately munches on popcorn, swigs Coke, and strokes Elijah’s knee.

Damn, but life is good, Sean thinks. The art cinema may be too small, too crowded (there are apparently quite a few other knee fetishists in the greater LA area) and too quiet for much more than some discreet knee fondling, but that’s okay. Considering the pace that he and Elijah have been keeping up for the past 28 days, maybe a little breather is no bad thing. Besides, Elijah’s willingness to indulge Sean’s penchant for obscure art house films and retrospectives almost makes up for the lack of explosive sex in the back row. It’s lonely, going to the movies by oneself. Not to mention the opera, the ballet, and symphonies (although the less said about wine clubs the better, considering that his fellow wine club members still haven’t forgiven Elijah’s ‘smells like cat piss’ comment, and possibly never will).

But Elijah isn’t the only one who has been doing some penchant indulging. Sean has been spreading his wings, too, and indulging Elijah’s penchant for obscure indie rock bands. Not only has he gone to two ‘gigs’ (as he now thinks of them) with his young, hip boyfriend but he’s actually enjoyed himself. Immensely. For as Elijah so cogently put it, “You can’t get up in the aisles and shake your ass to ‘Madama Butterfly’, Sean.”

The Madama Butterfly remark is based on personal experience; wonder of wonders, Elijah had actually agreed to accompany Sean to the opera a few evenings earlier, and he claims to have enjoyed himself immensely, too. (Sean had scrutinized that flawlessly perfect nose as Elijah spoke, suspecting another of those tiny white lies, but it hadn’t grown, even a smidgen. Of course, it’s always possible that Elijah really does like mini-gherkins, a thought that inserts into Sean’s mind a bizarre image of angels on fluffy white clouds holding paper doily-covered plastic plates containing slimy little pickles stuck with frilled toothpicks.)

In fact, in their eagerness to indulge each other’s penchants, they’ve started taking turns listening to Sean’s favorite classical music station and Elijah’s favorite indie music station, switching every time they get in the car. This admittedly makes for a weirdly schizophrenic driving experience, but considering the way Elijah drives, it somehow makes perfect sense.

They’ve even been seriously discussing Elijah’s idea of starting his own record label, with Sean handling the financial end of the venture, and Elijah, who has a mind-numbingly large acquaintance in the music industry and very decided (one might even say obstinately pig-headed if one weren’t madly in love with him) opinions about what is good music and what is rubbish, scoring the talent.

For years, Sean has bemoaned the fact that he was born with a head for crunching numbers (as opposed to, say, a throat for singing like Placido Domingo or a body for dancing like Baryshnikov), and followed what seemed a depressingly pre-destined path to an MBA and a useful, if duller than dishwater (especially to prospective beaux, pre-Elijah), career as a CPA. But hallelujah! At last he understands that his gift for number-crunching wasn’t bestowed upon him so that he could do the taxes of a bunch of chronically time-impaired Hollywood celebrities, but so that he would be prepared to help Elijah launch his record company. It’s an uplifting thought - the forces of destiny at work in his life! for the good! - made even more uplifting when he recalls Elijah’s reaction to his offer of assistance: short on words, but long on gratitude expressed in a fervent, if non-verbal, fashion…

“Sean? Seanie? Are you with me?”

A small hand waves slowly back and forth in front of his face, and Elijah’s voice penetrates the now-familiar haze that has descended over him. (Elijah-attention disorder: Sean has finally arrived at a diagnosis for his condition, and he’s contemplated writing it up and submitting it to a scientific journal like _Nature_ or the _Journal of the American Psychological Association_ , the only problem being that if he submits a photo of Elijah with it, researchers the world over might be afflicted with the same disorder, and the wheels of scientific progress would screech to a halt.)

“The movie is over, sweetie. The credits are rolling.”

“Oh, oops. Sorry! I’m afraid I, um, zoned out again.”

Elijah grins. “Good thing you’ve seen this movie before, huh? And by the way, fucking depressing ending,” he adds, making no move to get up, but rather settling back in his seat. “You might have warned me.”

“Sorry.”

“’Sokay.”

Sean settles back, too, his ribs creaking again as his over-full heart swells with love and gratitude. What has he done to deserve Elijah? he wonders. (And he’s given up qualifying that thought with a number like ‘for the millionth time’ or ‘for the billionth time’ - even his mathematically blessed brain can’t come up with a number high enough to equal the number of times he’s wondered this.)

For Sean had expected even Elijah’s angelic forbearance to falter when he’d confessed to yet another minor quirk he possesses: he is incapable of leaving a movie until the last credit has flashed across the screen and the very last note of the soundtrack has faded away.

Not even the pissed-off glares of theater cleaning crews waiting impatiently with their brooms and dustpans for him to get the hell out so they can sweep up the spilled popcorn can budge him. It’s as if his shoes become rooted to the sticky floor (and not by melted Jujubes or other substances he prefers not to think about except in relation to him and Elijah) which won’t release its hold on him until the bitter end.

He’s always had this ‘minor quirk’, although if asked, his family would undoubtedly quibble over his use of the word ‘minor’ to describe it. The first time it had happened was when Sean was a child of six. After refusing to get up and leave before the movie was over ( _101 Dalmatians_ , he will never, ever forget; he is certain that his irrational fear of polka dots began that day), his father had bodily lifted Sean from his seat and attempted to remove him from the theater. Within seconds the entire theater management had come rushing in to see who was being murdered. After that, his parents had taken to flipping a coin to decide who was going to sit with Sean while the other went to get the car with his brother.

(“Okay,” Elijah had said agreeably when Sean had explained. “We’ll just stay to the very end then. Not a problem.”

“Elijah, you… you… you’re…” As usual, Sean had been too choked up to get the words out, but as usual, Elijah had understood.

“I know,” he’d replied gently, hugging Sean’s arm and smiling his sweet, understanding smile, “I’m an angel.”)

Eventually the last credit rolls by, the last note of the soundtrack fades, the sticky floor lets Sean go, and they gather up their trash and sidle out of their row in a theater otherwise entirely empty save for the two of them and a handful of pissed-off cleaning persons slouched against the wall sending them dagger looks. Elijah beams sunnily at them, and wishes them all a nice day in a cheery voice as he drops the empty popcorn tub in the trash receptacle. Sean hunches his shoulders and scuttles quickly past them like a crab avoiding a many-tentacled octopus, keeping a wary eye on their brooms and long-handled dustpans, as he’s been ‘accidentally’ tripped a few times in the past. (It’s always been one of life’s enduring mysteries to him why watching a movie all the way to the end is so universally frowned on, but it clearly is considered rude, if not positively inhuman, to do so, one reason Sean has secretly wondered if someday the aliens, who he is convinced also watch movies - or the alien equivalent - to the very end, will come to take him away. He just hopes they’ll take Elijah, too. In fact, he’ll insist on it.)

After safely escaping from the theater, Sean and Elijah immediately detour to the men’s room. The super-size Coke Elijah had insisted that they share has done its caffeinated work with splendid efficiency, and used that peculiar property that (as far as Sean can tell) only soda seems to possess to bypass their other organs and zoom straight to their bladders. They station themselves side by side at the urinals, where they are soon joined by a couple of other filmgoers who have entered the john behind them.

As Sean unzips, untucks, and takes himself in hand, he sees Elijah darting suspicious glances from side to side, lest the newcomers be ogling Sean’s impressively large penis. He is extremely possessive of Sean’s penis, and is convinced that any guy who sees it is instantly going to covet it, whether he is gay or not. It’s really rather an endearing delusion, Sean thinks sentimentally, observing Elijah’s jealous scowl.

But as neither man seems inclined to ogle, Elijah relaxes and attends to his own unzipping. Elijah’s penis, while neither as long nor as thick as Sean’s, is as flawless as the rest of him. In fact, Sean feels certain that if angels have penises (and he hopes St. Peter won’t hold the thought against him when he reaches the Pearly Gates; he isn’t sure if it’s technically sacrilegious to speculate on the presence, or absence, of penises in angels) they all look exactly like Elijah’s: a delicate rose-pink, perfectly shaped and proportioned, and with a gentle curve to the left. It’s the sort of penis about which odes should be written, and if Sean had only been born with a head for writing poetry like Keats or Shelley instead of crunching numbers, he would do so. But after one abortive attempt that resulted in the immortal lines,

_Of roseate hue and shap’lier than Venus,  
Such is my belovèd Elijah’s penis._

he’d decided it was better to stick to reciting sections of the Internal Revenue Code by heart.

His business completed, and Cockzilla (as Elijah affectionately calls it, among other terms of endearment) safely tucked away and hidden from view, Sean goes to the sink to wash his hands. He is pleased to see that Elijah at the adjacent sink is letting the water run until it’s nice and hot, and is using ample soap, and rubbing his hands briskly, even working the soap under his fingernails. Sean had been extremely concerned the first time he and Elijah used a public restroom together and he’d observed Elijah employing the ‘lick and a promise’ method of washing his hands - running the tips of his fingers under a cold tap for a few brief seconds and then drying them on his jeans.

He’d gently but firmly lectured Elijah on the paramount importance of proper hygiene after using a public restroom, emphasizing the billions of nasty germs, such as streptococcus, staphylococcus, E. coli, shigella, hepatitis A, and the common cold, that were lurking everywhere, just waiting for their chance to jump on and infect an unsuspecting bathroom user.

“Did you know that while 95% of people claim to wash their hands after using a public restroom, only 67% actually do?” he’d said.

“I had no idea,” Elijah had replied, looking struck.

“Yes, and not only that, most germs are released into the air _after_ a toilet finishes flushing - which, by the way, you should always flush with your shoe, never your hands.”

“Really? Fuck, Sean, I never knew any of this stuff. You are so smart.”

This isn’t the usual reaction to his public restroom hygiene lecture (“Jesus, Sean, that’s disgusting” “I don’t want to hear another word, all right?” “What I don’t know won’t hurt me” is more typical).

Sean had been emboldened to go on (feeling a little like one of those scratchy old filmstrips they’d used to show in school). By the time he was finished, Elijah had turned quite pale. Fixing his enormous eyes on Sean’s face, he had earnestly assured him that in future, he would always take care to wash his hands thoroughly with hot water and lots of soap. Such had been the extreme gravity of the situation that for once Sean hadn’t zoned out, even briefly, under the influence of those eclipse-like eyes with their shooting golden rays. After all, the health of the man he loved could be in danger!

Even Elijah had balked, however, when Sean explained that the sink was the germiest place of all, worse even than the toilet, and that after washing, he should never under any circumstances touch the faucet handles directly with his hands, but use a paper towel to keep them from getting covered in germs again.

“The same is true for the door handle, Elijah. Remember: paper towels are your best line of defense. But always carry a spare packet of tissues with you in case the restroom has those hot air hand dryers and there aren’t any paper towels available.”

“Geez, Sean, don’t you think that’s a little bit, well, extreme? Won’t people think it’s weird? How about I use my elbow to open the door? Or my foot?” Elijah demonstrates, raising his leg so that glimpses of his pale bony kneecap flash through the artful tears in his jeans.

“I suppose you _could_ ,” Sean had allowed, trying not to be diverted either by his knee fetish or the reminder of Elijah’s dictionary-worthy flexibility and the uses to which they’ve put it. “Although a paper towel is definitely a safer option because you can throw it away when you’re done. But don’t worry,” he’d added, as Elijah’s face fell. “When we’re together, I’ll open the door for us both. I’m used to getting stared at.” Which is, alas, all too true. The paper towel performance never fails to elicit incredulous looks. Real men apparently don’t mind risking death by dirty door handles.

“No one had better stare at you when I’m around,” Elijah had muttered darkly.

Sean hadn’t realized just how prophetic Elijah’s words were to prove.

One of the two men in the john with them, a ‘33 percenter’ (as Sean thinks of them), departs without so much as a ‘lick and a promise’ rinse off. The second man is standing on the other side of Sean from Elijah, and doing a half-hearted job of washing his hands, mainly because, while he may have zero interest in ogling Sean’s penis, he can’t seem to stop staring in a sort of petrified fascination at Sean’s hands as he soaps, scrubs, rinses, soaps, scrubs, rinses, soaps, scrubs, rinses, and then snags a paper towel with which he protects his right hand while he turns the faucet handles to the off position.

The man’s scrutiny barely registers with Sean, who has developed a skin thick as rhinoceros hide to deflect the arrows of incredulity. His attention is focused on Elijah, who has finished his own ablutions, shut off the water with his elbow, and is now patiently waiting for Sean, a loving (and very distracting) smile on his face. Their eyes briefly meet in the mirror, and it’s reminiscent of all those times they locked glances through Sean’s kitchen window in the halcyon weeks of their courtship. Only now Sean can read Elijah’s mind: _Hey, Mr. Hottie, wanna go back to your place and watch some TV?_

_Hell, yeah!_ Sean replies. Cockzilla, highly approving of Elijah’s suggestion, gives a tiny twitch of anticipation. It has become quite the television addict.

Quickly, he drops the now germ-laden paper towel in the recessed trash receptacle under the sink, grabs a few fresh ones to dry his hands, and then disposes of them, too.

“Ready?” Elijah asks.

Sean plucks two more paper towels from the holder. “Okay, let’s go.” Towels at the ready, he strides to the exit to open the door for Elijah, feeling rather courtly, if truth be told, holding the door for his own true love. He imagines the paper towels are a lace-trimmed handkerchief, and wishes he had a satin-lined wool cloak he could spread out over the floor for Elijah, so his small feet wouldn’t have to touch the germ-infested tile (of course, the cloak would have to be burned afterward, but it would be worth the sacrifice).

“You’re one of those guys, aren’t you?” An unexpected voice, deep and scornful, disrupts his little Sir Walter Raleigh fantasy.

“What?” Sean’s footsteps falter and he glances behind him. He’s completely forgotten that they aren’t alone in the restroom.

At his side, Elijah stiffens and whirls lightly on the balls of his black Chucks like a boxer preparing for a scuffle. Sean’s heart suddenly leaps straight up his throat and lodges there. The man is tall, muscular and wearing a look on his face that Sean instantly recognizes: the smug self-righteous look of the supremely self-confident when in the presence of one whom they consider unacceptably weird. _Shit. Oh shit_. He has a sinking feeling that Elijah is not going to consider discretion the better part of valor, and let them get the fuck out of there.

“Elijah,” he says in a low and urgent voice. “Let’s just…”

But Elijah ignores him. His eyes have narrowed to slits and darkened to a familiar flinty gray. Nope, there’s going to be no getting the fuck out of there and leaving Mr. Machismo in the dust. _Shit. Double shit._ Mr. Machismo must outweigh Elijah by fifty pounds, and looks like he lifts weights regularly. He’ll make mincemeat out of Elijah if it comes to a fight. A light sweat breaks out all over Sean’s body.

“I said, you’re one of those guys, aren’t you? You know, like Jack Nicholson in that movie. A germ freak.”

_As Good As It Gets_ : god, how Sean loathes that movie, which has given otherwise normal people who just happen to have a minor cleanliness quirk a bad name. As if it isn’t bad enough that his own brother calls him Frasier (although personally, he’s always been more attracted to Niles), he has to deal with total strangers making fun of him.

Sean sometimes thinks that if one more person tells him he reminds them of Jack Nicholson’s character in _As Good As It Gets_ , he’ll scream, and if he wasn’t so consumed with terror for Elijah’s safety, this occasion might have been the straw that finally broke the germ freak’s back.

Sean isn’t a violent person. He learned as a child that there are much better ways to resolve a conflict than with your fists, namely staying in shape so you can outrun your opponent, especially when said opponent is bigger and stronger. Even when Behemoth had been surly with Elijah, Sean had only been tempted to run outside and punch him in the nose. He’s sadly certain that he never actually would have had the balls to do it. But Elijah… he has the balls (slightly uneven in size and shape, perhaps, but angelically perfect like the rest of him) to take on a man the size of Mr. Machismo without thinking twice.

“Did you know that public restrooms have more germs per square centimeter than a single litter box used by ten cats over the course of a week?” Elijah says, unexpectedly.

“Huh?”

_What?_ Sean stares in utter bafflement. He has never told Elijah this.

“It’s true,” Elijah says. “And scientific studies have shown that only 5% of adult males bother to wipe their asses with toilet paper when they’re finished going. Most of them just use their fingers, and they don’t even bother to wash their hands afterward.”

“That’s disgusting,” Mr. Machismo says, making a face indicative of total grossed-outedness.

Sean continues to stare. He hasn’t told Elijah this, either.

“Sure is. You ever take a close look at a public restroom door handle?”

“No,” admits Mr. Machismo.

“Well, take my advice and don’t, especially if you’ve just eaten,” Elijah says.

The man quickly averts his gaze from the brushed stainless steel door handle he’s been staring at like a rabbit mesmerized by a cobra. There is a dark brown stain on it, and he looks like he’s about to lose his lunch, literally.

That’s when Sean belatedly realizes that Elijah is making it all up, pulling random facts and statistics out of the air like a conjuror. He has no intention of fighting Mr. Machismo, not with fists anyway. He’s found a subtler, sweeter revenge.

“I was just reading an article in the newspaper last week about a man who caught Ebola in a public restroom,” Elijah goes on. He is on a roll now, warming up nicely to his topic. “First his body swelled up like a tick,” he holds his arms out to the side like parentheses and puffs out his cheeks, “then his internal organs liquefied into a bloody, sticky mess and started spewing out his eyes, nose, mouth and ears. The poor bastard died in an isolation chamber, screaming and writhing in agony, and the doctors were helpless to save him.”

“Jesus.” Perspiration is dotting Mr. Machismo’s brow and a sickly greenish hue has overspread his features. Sean feels a little sick himself.

“ _Pphhtt_ , you think that’s bad?” Elijah snorts and waves his hand in an airy fashion. “I’ve heard about guys who picked up flesh-eating disease from germs in public restrooms. Their skin just rotted away, until all their fingers and toes fell off, not to mention their dicks. Can you imagine how fucking painful it must be for your _dick_ to rot off?” he asks earnestly.

Even knowing what is going on now, Sean has to resist an urge to clamp his hands protectively over his crotch.

“Then there are the cases of bubonic plague and cholera and typhus… I’m telling you, man, these places are total hot zones for infectious disease. They should be _outlawed_.”

“My god, I had no idea.” Mr. Machismo is looking around him in a panic as if he can already see the deadly germs preparing to attack, with evil grins and outstretched claws dripping green acid. “Shit.”

“Exactly,” Elijah ripostes, and then, without losing a beat, pulls a paper towel from the holder mounted on the wall just inside the door and offers it to Mr. Machismo. “Paper towel?” he says, a look of positively unholy glee in eyes that are no longer flinty gray, but wickedly sparkling bright blue.

Without a word, Mr. Machismo grabs the towel in his right hand, and lunges for the door handle. His other hand is clamped tightly over his mouth as he stumbles out of the john and disappears.

“Well, that’s that,” Elijah says cheerfully as the door swings closed. “But I think I scared myself a little with all that shit I made up. Let’s get the fuck outta here, Sean. It’s giving me the creeps.”

But Sean can neither move nor speak. He is staring at Elijah rather the way he suspects Moses must have stared at God when he handed down the Ten Commandments. Awed doesn’t even begin to describe it.

“I hope you’re not upset with me for telling a few fibs.” A vertical worry line has appeared between Elijah’s brows. He is clearly unable for once to decipher Sean’s stupefied expression for what it really is. “But that asshole was a lot bigger than me, and besides, did you see the look on his face by the time I was done? Totally priceless, Seanie. He’d probably rather piss in his pants now than use a public john.” A giggle escapes him. “Sorry,” he apologizes.

“ _Sorry?_ ” Sean gasps faintly. “Elijah, you… you… you’re…”

A beatific smile spreads across Elijah’s face. “Not angelic at all, but I don’t care.” He slides his arm through Sean’s and hugs it. “Nobody messes with my boyfriend.”

~~~

_Nobody messes with my boyfriend_. The five most beautiful words in the English language, Sean thinks, as the image fades.

If only he deserved them.

_I wanted to run, but Elijah stayed and fought my battle for me. Let’s face it, Sydney, I’ll never be a hero to him and I have no right to ask him to move in with me. I’m a failure._

Sydney looks unexpectedly sympathetic. _My dear Sean, I was a drunkard and wastrel for much of my life, and a far more unlikely hero than you. Do not give into despair, my friend. Life is uncertain, and full of surprises._

_Not my life. I’m an accountant_ , says Sean glumly. _And there is no guillotine from which I can selflessly save him, either. Not that I wish we had the guillotine here, of course. I’m totally opposed to capital punishment, and besides it’s horribly messy, all that blood and gore, not that I have to tell **you** that…_

But Sydney is gone, vanished like a puff of smoke.

_How odd_ , thinks Sean. But even odder is what happens next. Something starts landing on the top of his head with a soft _plop, plop, plop_. It feels exactly as if he’s sitting outside in the rain.

_What the-?_

Then, before his astonished eyes appears a thin stream of water, falling onto the carpet between the sofa and the television, which is now playing the closing credits of _Men with Brooms_.

_A waterfall? In his **house**? Uh-oh…_

Sean glances up, where a tiny ominous crack has appeared in the smoothly painted white surface of the ceiling. A sudden, overwhelming premonition of disaster seizes him.

“Elijah! Watch out!” he yells.

He flings himself at a startled Elijah, pinning him down to the sofa cushions and covering him protectively with his body as, with a deafening crash that sends Boots streaking from the room with a banshee howl that could raise the dead, the ceiling collapses on top of them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once more Sean fumbles his way to a happy ending. Note: NSFW manip at the end of the story.

_Sean, do you hear something?_ Elijah had asked, not once but twice.

It hadn’t been the sound of their two hearts beating as one, or choirs of angels singing, or moans and gasps as they made love in the front passenger seat of Sean’s Lexus. It had been the hiss of water escaping from a burst water pipe over their heads. While Sean, with an obliviousness that even for him had achieved world-record heights, had been off in la-la land having imaginary conversations with Sydney Carton, the water had been accumulating and accumulating and accumulating until... BOOM! The ceiling caved in.

After the dust settles (metaphorically, as the (former) ceiling is much too wet to create dust), Sean simply lies there, unable to decide if he feels more stunned or humiliated. On sum, he decides it’s the latter. Water is raining down from above and trickling coldly under the collar of his shirt and along his spine. Large chunks of sodden sheet rock are draped over his head, shoulders, back, buttocks and legs like some bizarre seaweed wrap at a spa. 

Even for one whose life has sometimes seemed like long stretches of excruciatingly boring flat highway dotted with twenty car pile-ups that block every exit, this is a disaster. 

For one thing, Sean loves his house. He has devoted countless hours to selecting fabrics, paints and carpets, to hunting down the perfect furniture and artwork, to arranging everything just _so_ (and keeping it that way, at least until the advent of chaos – i.e., Elijah - into his life). He adores the Brunschwig and Fils flowered chintz that covers the sofa. He adores it even more now that he has Elijah in his life to clash with it so horribly. He adores the burled walnut coffee table on which he served Elijah his very first, admittedly cheese-centric, meal. He adores the Berber carpet that still bears a faint, hallowed grease spot from the Chevrefeuille (‘their’ cheese, as they now think of it) that had slid off Sean’s leg and plopped onto it. 

Now all these things he adores have been ruined because he was too busy worrying about being a Hero to Elijah to notice what was poised, like a metaphorical guillotine, directly above his head. 

But they are, after all, only things. They can be replaced (all, that is, save for the Brunschwig fabric; that particular pattern has, tragically, been out of production for several years. Sean had checked, thinking that as part of his Earthquake Preparedness Kit, it might be good to have an extra bolt squirreled away). 

But Sean’s first thought is not for furniture showrooms, carpet installers or the Brunschwig and Fils web site. It’s for Elijah; Elijah, who is totally, completely, and absolutely irreplaceable, and has no duplicate who can be squirreled away in the event of a natural disaster. 

Sean has no intention whatsoever of allowing Elijah to take up residence on the super special, extra fluffy and comfy cloud that St. Peter no doubt has reserved for him, not for another 50 years at _least_ (and St. Peter _better_ have reserved the cloud next door for Sean, or there are definitely going to be words exchanged at the Pearly Gates). 

“Elijah, are you all right?” he asks anxiously. Elijah is still pinned beneath him, with his face protectively pressed into Sean’s shirtfront.

“Mrmphmphrmph,” replies Elijah, struggling feebly, like a worm on the end of a hook.

Maybe ‘pressed’ isn’t precisely the right word, Sean decides guiltily. ‘Squashed’ or possibly ‘smothered’ might be more accurate. He relaxes his hold and cautiously lifts his head. Soggy bits of sheet rock are dislodged from his skull, and land with a soft _splash_ on the equally soggy carpet. 

Elijah is staring at him. His eyes are popping out like a cartoon character, and his face is scarlet. His mouth is working but no sounds are emerging. 

“Elijah, speak to me,” Sean demands, alarmed. Is he having a seizure from lack of oxygen to his brain?

Elijah only continues to stare and his mouth to work.

“Elijah, _say_ something.” Panic starts to set in. 

“Sean, you… you… you’re…” Elijah finally stutters. 

_Oh no!_ Sean mentally moans. He knows what’s coming next. He wants to howl in pain. He wants to shake his fist at fate for mocking his dreams of love and heroism. 

He does neither, but simply says in a hopeless voice, “I know. You don’t have to tell me. I’m an idiot, a moron, a loser…” 

“A hero,” says Elijah.

“What?” Water must have gotten into his ears, because it had sounded exactly as if Elijah had said the longed-for word ‘hero’.

“You’re a _hero_. Oh Sean, you threw yourself on top of me to protect me, and now…” His lower lip trembling like a Grand Marnier soufflé removed from the oven too soon, Elijah raises his hand to Sean’s damp brow. When he withdraws it, his fingertips are a brighter scarlet than his face. “You’re bleeding!” 

“ _What?_ ” Water _definitely_ must have gotten into his ears, Sean decides, because it had sounded exactly as if Elijah had said the word ‘bleeding’! Impossible, his mind thinks, automatically rejecting the ridiculous notion that a load of soggy sheetrock falling on his head could possibly result in a bleeding wound.

But come to think of it, that red stuff on Elijah’s fingers not only looks like blood, it smells kind of coppery and… oh my god… it is… 

Blood.

_Blood._

_His BLOOD._

Black dots are once more dancing the cha-cha in front of Sean’s eyes. He doesn’t do blood. Blood is supposed to stay neatly and tidily inside one’s arteries and veins, and never, ever exit unless expressly invited by a phlebotomist, or if one’s head is chopped off by a guillotine while selflessly rescuing one’s beloved from certain death (after which one would be dead and never notice the mess so it wouldn’t matter). 

A ceiling collapsing on top of one due to obliviousness simply doesn’t qualify as a reason, as it is neither practical, romantic nor dramatic, but only incredibly, incredibly dumb.

But there is no way to put the blood back, now that it has escaped. And though he knows it’s irrational, Sean is suddenly, absolutely convinced that every trickle of moisture he can feel coursing down his face, neck, shoulders, and back is coming from his scalp, which he imagines gaping wide as a positive Niagara Falls of crimson fluid gushes forth… 

The black dots leave off dancing the cha-cha, and start doing high kicks, as if they’re auditioning for the Rockettes’ Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall.

_Oh god, please don’t let me faint in front of Elijah again,_ Sean pleads. _Please. I’ll do anything, even get a tattoo of Elijah’s name on my ass, although the pain from that will make me faint for sure, so if you can think of a less dire alternative, God, I’d be eternally grateful._

God, however, doesn’t seem interested in Sean’s gratitude, eternal or otherwise. The black dots are hired, and move right along into the Can-Can. 

_Sydney, help me out here, would you?_ Sean begs, forgetting that it was his imaginary Sydney conversations that had gotten him into this mess in the first place. But Sydney, the cad, doesn’t reappear. Sean is well and truly on his own, it seems.

“Sean? Oh sweetie, you look like you’re about to pass out,” Elijah says. His brow is furrowed with concern, and his eyes, thankfully no longer popping out on cartoon-stalks (although even that can’t render them less than angelically perfect), are swimming with tears.

With a sense of horror greater than when he’d discovered there was blood on Elijah’s fingers, Sean realizes that Elijah, his angel, is on the verge of crying! And that simply can’t be allowed. Angels might or might not have penises, they might or might not live on fluffy clouds, they might or might not play harps, but they definitely don’t cry. 

“I’m all right,” Sean lies valiantly, setting his chin in a Sydney Carton-esque fashion. The Rockettes, thankfully, exit stage right, with one final flourish. “It’s just a little,” he briefly shuts his eyelids, “blood.”

“Oh Sean, you’re so brave!” Elijah says worshipfully. And _that_ is almost enough to make Sean really swoon—from a delirium of joy, this time. No one has _ever_ called him brave before (with good reason, he admits, recalling several embarrassing incidents from the past besides the Pierced Ear Incident, such as the Mad Tea Party Ride Debacle at Disneyland, the Flatulent Pony Mishap at a friend’s 10th birthday party, and the Turbulent Airplane Meltdown when he had to fly to New York on business a few years earlier). “Let’s get you up, sweetie,” Elijah adds in that tender coo that simultaneously melts Sean into a puddle of goo and causes said goo to start bubbling like a witch’s cauldron. “We have to take care of that cut.”

_Splat. Splat. Splatsplatsplatsplat._

More sodden bits of sheetrock hit the carpet like divers doing belly flops as Sean carefully lifts himself off Elijah and stands up. Now he can see the full extent of the damage, and a tiny moan of dismay escapes him. “My beautiful living room!” he mourns as Elijah gets up and stands beside him.

“I’m more worried about you, Sean,” says Elijah, “and that cut on your scalp.”

“How…how bad is it?” Sean asks apprehensively, wishing his parents had never dragged him and his brother to Niagara Falls for a visit all those years ago. There are plenty of waterfalls in California, after all. Nice _small_ waterfalls that trickle instead of gush. (And such is the extremity of the situation that the thought of trickling waterfalls for once doesn’t fill Sean with a nigh-overwhelming urge to pee.) 

Elijah carefully parts the wet strands of hair above Sean’s left temple and peers intently at his scalp. Then he lets out a relieved sigh and says, “It’s not too bad.” He digs a crumpled tissue from the front pocket of his jeans and dabs at the wound. Under the circumstances, Sean can’t even worry about the sterility of the tissue. “Just a laceration. But scalp wounds do tend to bleed a lot.” He holds out the tissue, which is stained scarlet.

Sean makes a strangled noise. _Did Elijah really have to show him that?_ Hovering at the edge of his vision are some familiar black dots, doing warm up kicks.

“Hmm. Guess I shouldn’t have showed you that, huh? Relax, Seanie, everything’s going to be just fine. Trust me. The bleeding’s almost stopped already.” He dabs a few more times, says, “There, all better!” and gives Sean a reassuring hug, ignoring the fact that Sean’s polo shirt is soaked and covered in bits of sheetrock.

Sean makes another strangled noise as that heavenly smelling, delightfully solid and deliciously warm body presses against him. Cut scalp? What cut scalp?

Elijah misinterprets the second strangled noise, however, and asks, “Do you want to go to the emergency room just in case? I really don’t think it’s necessary, but if it’ll make you happier…”

“No,” Sean replies firmly. And this time, amazingly, his resistance to the suggestion has nothing whatsoever to do with George Clooney, the closeted gay emergency room doctor. 

Because in one of those bizarre real life coincidences that prove there really is a God, and that He definitely has a sense of humor (albeit a warped one) Elijah and George Clooney have actually met—eight days earlier to be precise. Not in a hospital emergency room, but in the offices of Tell, Pearce, Arnaz and Astin, where George, a new client, had come to meet with his accountant—not Sean, but another of the senior partners. Sean had been offered the account, but declined, feeling that even his rigid (one might almost say fanatical) adherence to the Internal Revenue Code might crumble if the income taxes for a man he considered (irrationally or not) a threat to his happy love life, were placed in his hands. 

Elijah had called around 11:30 that memorable day to say that he was heading over to take Sean out to lunch. ‘Out to lunch’ was, of course, yet another of Elijah’s little euphemisms, as they never actually went anywhere or ate anything (well, there was the day that Elijah brought peanut butter and chocolate syrup with him, but whenever Sean recalls the moment Elijah went down on his chocolate drizzled dick, he threatens to spontaneously combust, so he tries not to think about it unless he and Elijah are naked and within a foot or two of a bed or other suitable horizontal surface). 

In fact, every single one of Sean’s ‘wild monkey sex in his office’ fantasies has come blissfully true (and then some) and he hasn’t even had to hire Elijah as his assistant. In fact, work, like the rest of his life, has been transformed by his angelic-looking ex-garbageman, in ways Sean hadn’t expected and sometimes suspects should bother him more than they do. 

For example, he has occasionally found himself thinking about Elijah at inappropriate times, and zoning out in the middle of a particularly dull and boring meeting, and recently, when his assistant (who has no idea how close she had come to being replaced by a starving ex-garbageman) produced a requested financial report one half-hour late, he’d only said vaguely, ‘That’s okay’, rather than deliver his usual stern lecture on the vital importance of adhering strictly to deadlines. 

(Oddly, she had later asked Sean for Elijah’s home address. When he had quizzed her about why she needed it, she’d replied that it was so she could send Elijah a thank-you note. He still has no idea what that was about; if Elijah ever got the note, he’s never mentioned it, but she and Elijah have exchanged a few looks that make him wonder what was in it. He suspects, however, it’s one of those things that he’s probably better off not knowing.)

But perhaps allowing an occasional deadline to slip past or daydreaming through the hundredth iteration of the same boring lecture on the tax code, isn’t such a bad thing. The atmosphere at the firm does seem, well, more relaxed of late, and Elijah _is_ very popular with Sean’s coworkers. 

On the day of the George Clooney Encounter, as Sean will forever think of it, Sean had been hovering impatiently in the doorway to his office, waiting for that first lust-jolting, drool-inducing glimpse of Elijah coming down the hall, and trying to hide the bulge at his crotch with the hem of his charcoal-gray suit jacket. Just as Elijah appeared, a vision of angelic (not to mention insanely hot) perfection in his knee-torn jeans and torso-and-nipple-hugging white tee shirt, the door to the office across the hall had opened, and out had stepped George Clooney, like some vision conjured by a particularly sadistic magician. 

A soundless ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO’ had echoed through Sean’s brain as George—tall, fit, and leading-man-handsome George, rich, famous and charm-the-birds-from-the-trees George—closed the door behind him, gave Sean, standing paralyzed with horror like Lot’s gay boyfriend, a pleasant nod, and headed down the hall in the direction of Elijah.

‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO’. The soundless scream had continued unabated as Sean’s worst nightmare unfolded. He could have been the inspiration for Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’; he was quite sure his expression was identical.

As if in slow motion, the way car and train wrecks and other disasters appear to the onlooker, the two men approached each other, and Sean’s life in all its pathetic, doomed hopefulness flashed before his very eyes. Elijah and George each stepped a little to the right to make room. They came abreast each other. They stepped past each other. They kept going. THEY KEPT RIGHT ON GOING. Elijah saw Sean; his face broke into a beatific smile and he waved.

“Hey!” he’d called cheerfully, his pale bony kneecaps flashing with every stride.

Sean had clung to the doorjamb for dear life, and it had nothing whatsoever to do with the feeding of his knee fetish. “Hey,” he’d said weakly, while his own knees threatened to imitate an accordion and wheeze downward.

“You okay, sweetie?” Elijah had asked as he hustled up. “You look kinda pale.”

“That was George Clooney,” Sean had said.

“ _Who_ was George Clooney?” repeated Elijah blankly.

“That man you just passed in the hallway. He was George Clooney. _The_ George Clooney.”

“Really?” Elijah had glanced behind him, but George was gone. “Fuck, I didn’t even notice him. Guess I only have eyes for you, Seanie.” He beamed then frowned, clearly recalling Sean’s words on the day they met. “You weren’t really worried, were you?”

“What, me worry?” Sean had joked, but Elijah wasn’t fooled.

“Oh Sean! You were! You really thought that he was going to fall instantly in love with me at first glance, didn’t you?” Elijah giggled and shook his head. “What am I going to do with you?” His eyes dropped to Sean’s crotch, still displaying a blatant welcome message. “On second thought, I take that back. I know exactly what I’m going to do with you. Come on.” And he’d grabbed Sean’s hand.

But Sean hadn’t budged. Once the shock had passed, he’d found himself surprisingly annoyed with George. How dare he not fall instantly in love with Elijah! How dare he allow angelic perfection to pass right under his nose and ignore it? He had been half-tempted to run after George, shake him, and demand to know what the fuck his problem was. But self-preservation (George was, after all, at least six inches taller than Sean and very fit, not to mention that even Sean’s stupidity didn’t stretch to purposely sabotaging his love life) held him back, as did Elijah’s firm, hot little hand. Then Elijah dragged Sean inside his office, slammed the door, pushed him up against it and proved categorically once and for all that as far as he was concerned, George Clooney was about as attractive as the Welcome Pig in Sean’s parent’s front yard.

So now Sean shakes his head, trying not to wince as the laceration on his scalp makes its presence known, and says again, “No, no emergency room, Elijah. Anyway, before we do anything else, I have to shut off the water and call the plumber.”

“Do you know how to do that?” Elijah asks in surprise, raising his perfectly arched eyebrows (the left one of which, due to a childhood accident involving a toy bow and arrow set, has a scar through it, which somehow only enhances its perfection in Sean’s eyes). “Turn off the water in the house, I mean?”

“Of course,” Sean says. He realizes that one of these days soon he will have to sit Elijah down and give him a little lecture about the importance of knowing the locations of the shut off valves for every pipe in one’s house, in the event of earthquake or obliviousness. But it is not this day. For one thing, the sofa is no longer fit for sitting on. For another, water is still pouring from the giant hole in the ceiling, and the floor is beginning to resemble a babbling brook. Any second now ducks and geese and swans are going to descend through the hole and take up residence.

“Wow,” Elijah says. “That’s fucking impressive. I don’t know shit about any of that stuff. You are so smart, Sean.”

_Smart. Brave. Heroic._ Take that, George Clooney, Sean thinks smugly, as he squishes his way across the room. Or perhaps ‘struts’ might be more accurate, if one can simultaneously strut _and_ squish. Cut scalp? What cut scalp? Sean is feeling no pain.

“I wonder where poor Boots has gotten to,” Elijah remarks, as they enter the hallway.

“Probably upstairs on our—I mean, my bed.” 

_Damn_. Damn, damn, _damn_. Sean glances back at Elijah, and catches an expression on his face that might be hurt, or might be annoyance. Oh shit. Oh _shit_. Is he annoyed with Sean for presuming to call it their bed, or is he hurt by Sean quickly correcting himself, as if to make it clear that the bed isn’t _theirs_ , just _his_? 

What should he do now? The words he yearns to say, _Will you move in with me, Elijah? Will you join your life to mine until death and even after, whether it’s on a fluffy cloud or in a moldy grave or somewhere even my rampageous imagination hasn’t pictured us?_ , hover on his lips.

But does Elijah want Sean to say them? The lurking doubt eats at Sean. Or is he dreading having to let Sean down by saying ‘no’ because he doesn’t think about them in terms of fluffy clouds or moldy bones or anything else long-term? They’ve only been dating for a month after all and…

_Fuck_. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. WHY ARE RELATIONSHIPS SO FRAUGHT? He despairs. 

Sean sometimes thinks that he should contact NASA about his ability to shoot at warp speed from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. He feels certain that if they knew how to make use of this amazing talent of his, space travel would be a piece of cake. Maybe they’d reward him by naming a planet in a distant galaxy after him: Planet Neurotic Fuck-Up.

While the crisis in Sean’s brain continues to rage on, Boots, who isn’t on the bed after all, comes trotting up, her fur standing all on end. She is clearly pissed off by the interruption in their pleasant evening watching _Men with Brooms_ , and proceeds to tell them so in no uncertain terms. Sean might not know much about cats yet, but he recognizes the look on her face and the tone of her voice. Like him, she is both a perfectionist and a creature of habit, and doesn’t approve of unexpected alterations to her schedule. Sean has no idea if all cats are this way, but he does know that Boots was clearly destined to be the cat for him.

“Oh, poor baby,” coos Elijah, crouching to scoop her up in his arms. “Did that nasty old ceiling falling in scare you?”

Boots snuggles up against Elijah’s chest in a way that, in any other being on the Planet Earth (or the Planet Neurotic Fuck-Up, for that matter), from the tiniest insect to the largest multi-tentacled alien, would have aroused Sean’s jealousy. But he can’t be jealous of Boots because she is in large part the reason Sean has Elijah in his life. If she hadn’t taken to hanging out in his yard, he wouldn’t have started feeding her, and the stinky can of ‘Gourmet Salmon and Shrimp Feast’ wouldn’t have been accidentally left on his pristine driveway to be picked up by Sean and used as an excuse to chase the garbage truck that was taking Elijah away from him (as he thought at the time) forever, and he would never have worked up the nerve to invite him to dinner and ended up making a total fool of himself after Elijah arrived (which, miraculously, hadn’t seemed to bother Elijah in the least for reasons Sean still has trouble understanding), and they wouldn’t have ended up spending several days doing nothing but having the world’s most amazing sex all over Sean’s house, and… 

The wheels of Sean’s mind grind to a halt. He no longer has the faintest idea where his thought train had been headed, except that, as always, the end of the line involves him and Elijah having sex.

“Don’t worry, Bootsie,” Elijah goes on, turning her adorable, scrunched up little black and white face toward Sean. “Your daddy won’t let anything happen to you. He’s the smartest and bwavest daddy in the whole, wide world.”

That’s it. THAT IS IT. If there is one thing Sean has always detested more than anything, if there is one thing in a beau (prospective or otherwise) that has spelled total doom to a possible relationship, even more than giggling, it’s baby talk. But even if the Unsuitable Dating Material alarm had still been functional, and not smashed into atomic particles that are floating around out in space somewhere (possibly to land on Planet Neurotic Fuck-Up and infect all the inhabitants thereof), it would not have gone off. Because when Elijah uses baby talk, the effect is, well… All Sean can think is that if he were a woman, his ovaries would be exploding right about now, and he’d be going all broody and running out to purchase a designer bassinet and hand-crafted artisan high chair and start knitting little woolen Gucci booties. Even if it’s impossible, at that moment HE WANTS ELIJAH’S CHILD. Even the thought of midnight feedings and dirty diapers can’t dampen the ardor he feels for this idea.

Uh-oh.

But even more, what he wants is…

“Elijah,” he says loudly, causing Elijah to jump and stare at him in round-eyed astonishment. “Stay right here. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.” And without waiting for a reply, Sean takes off, squishing and sliding through the house to the utility room. 

He throws the light switch and dashes past the neatly organized shelves of Earthquake Preparedness Kit supplies (augmented recently to include cases of gourmet cat food for Boots and extra MREs for Elijah) over to the nicely laminated diagram of the gas and water pipes that he has taped to the wall. He quickly locates the main shut-off valve for the water system, and turns the handle (lubricated on a regular basis, of course) to the off position. No sooner has he done that then he is dashing again to the nearest phone. He speed dials his plumber, who promises to be there in an hour, and seems taken aback when Sean tells him, “No, an hour is too soon. Make it two.”

Sean slams down the phone and races back to Elijah, still standing in the hallway holding Boots, right where Sean had left him. 

“Elijah,” Sean pants, squishing to a halt. “Will you run around naked on the front lawn in the rain with me?”

“Okay,” Elijah says agreeably, and sets Boots down.

“That’s it? Just ‘okay’? No questions asked?” Sean is amazed.

“Sean,” Elijah says, starting to unbutton his jeans, “if ever someone needed to run around naked on his front lawn in the rain, it’s you.”

Sean is too choked up to speak. He simply kicks off his soggy Mephistos, peels off his sodden clothes until he’s totally naked, and reaches for Elijah’s hand. “Ready?” he asks.

“Fuck yeah!” Elijah (now equally naked) replies with enthusiasm.

They go to the front door, and Sean draws a deep breath and opens it. “Here we go!” he says, exchanging a giddy smile with Elijah. And then, with a primal shout of ‘Yeeeeeeehaaaaaaa!’ to the heavens, they are off. 

It’s the most amazingly liberating feeling Sean has ever experienced in his life. The rain is pelting down, but unlike the water from the burst pipe in the living room, it’s warm, like bath water. As it glides sensuously over his naked skin,he has the oddest sensation that he is being reborn. 

Elijah is running ahead of him, his pale body gleaming like a dolphin’s belly in the glow from the lights that line the front walk, and he is giggling madly as he leaps the slate path and sprints across the grass with Sean in hot pursuit. He dodges around the bushes and trees, and Sean is laughing and laughing as he chases after him with his arms outstretched and the rain running down his face and body. Mud squishes between his toes, but Sean doesn’t care. He’s letting go, for the first time in his life he is truly, totally letting go, and it feels _glorious_!

Headlights illumine the rainy, misty street, but Sean hardly notices as the car slowly passes. Let them look, he thinks fleetingly, running to head Elijah off as he sprints toward the driveway. Just before Elijah reaches it, Sean catches him with a triumphant yell. “Gotcha!” he crows, grabbing him around the waist, but Elijah tickles Sean unmercifully until he is laughing so hard he can no longer hold on to the slippery, wriggling young man, who squirms free and takes off again. Blinking the rain from his eyes, Sean follows.

Elijah runs behind the largest tree on the front lawn, a Valley oak that helps shade the house from the summer sun. Its trunk is wide enough practically to hide Elijah from view. Still giggling, he peeks out from behind the trunk, hands resting on either side of it, and Sean is suddenly struck by an idea. A crazy, wonderful idea.

He doesn’t think about the unhealthy-looking knobs and bumps on the tree’s bark or the risk of contracting flesh-eating disease. He runs straight up to the tree, throws his arms around it, and hugs it.

“Sean, what the fuck are you doing?” Elijah shouts over the rain.

“I’m hugging this tree!” Sean says, leaning back and beaming at Elijah before leaning in again. The bark prickles his bare skin and it’s uncomfortable as hell, but he doesn’t care, he just hugs the tree harder, and he has a strange impression that the tree is hugging him back, as if it approves of what he’s doing. Maybe tree-huggers know something after all, Sean thinks.

“Oh my god, that’s a brilliant idea,” Elijah enthuses, and he stands right next to Sean and hugs the tree, too, so that their arms overlap and their bodies touch. They look each other and grin like fools, and then Sean says, and he has no fear or doubt now about what the answer will be, because Elijah is standing naked in the rain next to him while they hug a tree, “Elijah Wood, I love you, and I want you to move in with me and live with me forever and ever and ever.”

Elijah’s eyes fill up with tears. “Oh Sean, I thought you’d never ask!” he says. And then they are no longer hugging the tree but each other, and Sean is crying, too, and their lips, wet with rain and tears, meet in a long, blissful kiss.

“Let’s go inside and tell Boots the good news,” Elijah says when they draw back after an eternity or two. His eyes, those midnight blue pools shot through with golden light, have never looked so radiant. It’s as if the moon and stars are shining, right through the rain clouds. “She’s going to be so fucking happy!”

_Not as fucking happy as I am,_ Sean thinks, for that would be impossible for anyone, cat, human or alien.

Arms tight around each other, they walk across the lawn through the rain to the front door, still standing wide open. On the threshold, they stop. Sean looks at Elijah, Elijah looks at Sean. No words are necessary. Smiling, Sean bends and scoops Elijah up into his arms. He straightens easily, for in that moment he has the strength of a thousand Seans. Then he carries Elijah over the threshold and into their new life- together.

Some sixth sense causes Sean to pause just inside the door and glance behind him. And there they are: Sydney Carton and Charles Darnay. They are standing arm-in-arm on the front walk, untouched by the falling rain, and they are smiling at him. Sean grins back and nods, and the last thing he sees before he kicks the door closed behind him is Sydney, giving him a thumbs-up of approval.

~end~

 


End file.
